Threshold of Pain
by likeiloveyouforpussies
Summary: After the events of the film, Marianne finishes her painting called Portrait of a Lady on Fire.


Threshold of pain. The expression implies that there is a place, a physical space one passes through. Whether willing or not, one is but a visitor in the domains of pain. That was how it felt; rather than being a physical sensation, it was as if you were actually transported somewhere. And, since everybody feels differently, pain is wise enough to provide a version of agony that is tailored to each person.

Would hell be like that? Would heaven? Was Hades? She did know a thing or two about the Underworld and the openings it provided, and the doors it closed.

Marianne cracked open the wooden frame and sat on the windowsill, with her bent knees against her chest. She puffed on her little, clay pipe and watched the ribbons of smoke waft outside, as the sounds of the street trickled into the room. Two men were having a spirited argument directly underneath her window, amid the backdrop of horses clopping by and a crescendo of dog barks.

The canvas sat there on its easel like a defiant orphan. It was not gallant, it was not proper, that was not how things were done. But it was done. It was no portrait, no mythological depiction, not even a pastoral scene. And yet, without fitting any of those categories, was it not all three combined? The grandiose unapologetically and unashamedly mixed in with the commonplace. As in myths. As in love.

She had traversed the threshold, and was now basking in the agony, which was almost joyful. It would fade—or she would fade from it—but not yet. She untied and parted her paint-streaked robe, for it felt heavy on her frame, just like her dress and overcoat had felt that night. Her hand was smeared in darkness, with specks of ocher on her fingertips. She was still in the replica of the field, brushwood up to her ankles, staring at the replica of the woman whose skirts had caught fire.

And the haunting image kept her there, with the replica of the woman's smile echoing strongly inside the chamber of her body. For time is nonexistent inside the realm of pain; one experiences it like the first time. There, one can have it all, the smile, the harmonies of the women gathered together, Héloïse walking with her skirts ablaze, Héloïse's hand in hers. Everything, except the real thing. For one could relive it, but not alter it.

Resting her temple on the chipped window frame, Marianne acknowledged that the world outside had become quieter and darker, save for the occasional rattling carriage and the amber glow of the street lantern. Parisians were having supper – a brief respite before bubbling out and into the streets once more. She took a drag on the pipe and closed her eyes.

"Why was it so important to see me smile?" asked Héloïse one night. Letting her dress fall and pool around her feet, she then stepped out of it and into bed.

Marianne scooted towards the sideboard of the bed and, when Héloïse joined her, she cupped her jaw and cheekbone in her hand, barely touching. "To be familiar with your face, to know how it works."

"And are you familiar with it now?" Héloïse's lips twisted playfully.

"Are you not familiar with mine?" Marianne arched her eyebrows and tightened her fingers around the girl's face. She hung on to the moment a couple of seconds before smiling.

The hearth crackled and flickered in cradling waves, both in Paris and in Brittany, both in present time and in her memory. Héloïse was kissing her and grasping the back of her neck. Marianne dragged her fingers down the length of Héloïse's arm, closing them around her hand, and that spark of passion swept her away and took her through a gallery of instants. She squeezed Héloïse's hand and pulled her to her feet on the field, she helped her down the rocky descent to the beach and lost contact. She helped her with the back lacing of her dress upon the return of her mother and lost her.

She lost her indeed. But not before letting her go herself by turning around one last time, and with Héloïse's previous permission to let her go, by asking her to turn around.

In art as in love, at some point one needed to stop. But not yet. Héloïse had affirmed that one day Marianne would remember the woman in the portrait—be it the one she had been commissioned to paint, or the little ones she had made for herself during her stay—instead of her, instead of the woman in front of her, in bed with her. Maybe so. But not yet.

As Parisians proceeded to embody the term "nightlife" by pouring back into the streets, Marianne let her head fall back and returned to the domesticity of the kitchen, where she ascertained what she was feeling. She went to the image of the burning dress, when she understood that they were both standing exactly in the same place, wanting the same thing. She swept into the caves, where they unveiled their mouths for their first kiss, and into her room that night, when Héloïse told her that she had been waiting for her, that she had been thinking, not dreaming. She thought about how they had been as intentional and as purposeful as they could, because despite the little control they had over events that were larger than them, they had managed to compose the past they wanted to dwell in every time they crossed that threshold of pain.


End file.
